2015-02-17
Explanation
The Joke
A tour guide at what appears to be a church or religious site explains that the saint's body is "divinely blessed and is thus incorruptible -- it does not decay." A visitor asks, "Wait, really?" The next panel shows a newspaper headline: "Francis Xavier to Be Used as Food Preservative" with the subheadline "It's a miracle of freshness!"
The Humor
The comic takes the Catholic concept of "incorruptibility" -- the belief that certain saints' bodies do not decompose after death as a sign of divine favor -- and extends it to an absurdly literal conclusion. If a saint's body truly resists decay, then logically it could be used as a food preservative. The joke works because it treats a religious miracle with the cold, pragmatic logic of commercial food science, creating a jarring collision between the sacred and the mundane. The newspaper headline format adds to the humor by presenting this sacrilegious idea as if it were a perfectly reasonable news story.
References
- Francis Xavier (1506-1552): A co-founder of the Jesuit order and a Catholic missionary saint. His body is kept in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa, India, and is one of the most famous examples of alleged incorruptibility, though the body has significantly deteriorated over the centuries.
- Incorruptibility: A Roman Catholic belief that divine intervention can preserve the bodies of certain saints from normal decomposition after death.